All Posts Tagged With: "inflation"
The Euro: The Folly of Political Currency
The financial markets continue to surge and collapse based on the latest news from Europe. As of this writing, the big events are Slovakia’s unwillingness to contribute to a bailout fund and the failure of Dexia, a French-Belgian bank with assets of almost $700 billion. As the sovereign debt crisis has intensified in the last [...]
4Jan2012 | Robert P. Murphy | 3 comments | ContinuedA Return to Gold?
“Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. . . . Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society. . . .The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the [...]
30Nov2011 | and John L. Chapman | 13 comments | ContinuedThe New Fed
“Things are seldom what they seem.” —W. S. Gilbert, “H.M.S. Pinafore” Nowhere is this more true than in government, which means we have to watch it closely. Unfortunately preconceived notions can make us impervious to events right in front of us and lead us to colossal misperceptions. Take the Federal Reserve System. (All together now: [...]
21Sep2011 | Sheldon Richman | 2 comments | ContinuedQuantitative Easing Forever?
In the end both quantitative easing and the zero-interest-rate policy have been ineffective in restoring economic vitality while also creating a massive overhang of repressed inflation.
10Aug2011 | Christopher Lingle | 7 comments | ContinuedWhat’s Up with Inflation?
Inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) has been almost nonexistent for several years, though it started creeping higher in the first half of 2011. Yet many prices have been rising at double-digit percentage rates. Are official figures trustworthy? And what of expectations? There is a great deal of buzz right now about inflation [...]
22Jun2011 | Warren C. Gibson | 14 comments | ContinuedMoney and Inflation: What’s Going On in the World?
Are America and the world at risk for another inflationary episode similar to the 1970s and early 1980s? Or do current low rates of inflation portend low inflation for the foreseeable future? David Wessel revisited this question in his “Capital” column in the February 24, 2011, Wall Street Journal. He correctly stated that the Federal [...]
25May2011 | Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr. | 6 comments | ContinuedInflation Isn’t Coming?
Libertarian columnist Stephen Chapman sounds a dissenting note against the warnings of an approaching price inflation: There is no indication that inflation is heating up this time, either. Investors wouldn’t be snapping up three-year Treasury notes at 1 percent if they were expecting their purchasing power to be ravaged by wolves any moment now…. The [...]
14May2011 | Sheldon Richman | 4 comments | ContinuedQuantitative Uneasiness
In their recent paper, “Has the Fed Been a Failure?,” George A. Selgin, William D. Lastrapes, and Lawrence H. White conclude that over nearly 100 years the Federal Reserve’s performance has been mostly awful. Unfortunately, the Fed is currently engaged in a policy that will likely make a nice addition to their article. This policy, [...]
21Apr2011 | Ivan Pongracic Jr. | 36 comments | ContinuedA Simple Solution
By overriding market money prices we deny ourselves important data about the country’s fiscal health.
11Apr2011 | Richard W. Fulmer | 3 comments | ContinuedGold and Money, II
Last month we examined some propositions about gold as money, drawing from theory and history. This month we ask whether and how gold might once again serve a monetary function. Money of any sort, commodity-based or not, derives its value in large part from what economists call a “network effect.” Like a fax machine, whose [...]
23Mar2011 | Warren C. Gibson | 10 comments | ContinuedMoney, Inflation, and Rising World Commodity Prices
Chairman Bernanke is being disingenuous about the options foreign central banks and governments have to counteract the Fed’s easy-money policy that threatens a global outbreak of inflation similar to the 1970s.
28Feb2011 | Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr. | 6 comments | ContinuedGold and Money
Nothing seems to arouse passions—pro and con—quite like suggestions that gold should once again play a role in our money. “Only gold is money,” says one side. “It’s a barbarous relic,” says the other. Let’s turn down the heat a bit and look into some propositions about gold. That should lead us to some reasonable [...]
24Feb2011 | Warren C. Gibson | 23 comments | Continued“F” as in Fed
The Federal Reserve, America’s fatally conceited monetary central planner, is not terribly popular these days—which is cause for hope—and now we have a report card on the entire Fed era that strongly supports the view that we’d be better off without it. At the very least, as the authors suggest, the burden of proof is [...]
24Feb2011 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedA Libertarian Revolution in the Mideast?
As I sit writing this the famed eccentric president of Libya, Muammar al-Qaddaffi, is fleeing from hordes of protesters in Tripoli after having stated he will “Die a martyr” defending his throne. Waves of unrest have spread across Africa and the Middle East in the past month as protests have brought down regimes from Egyptian [...]
23Feb2011 | Austin Petersen | 7 comments | ContinuedNew Year’s Resolutions for Politicians
Recognizing that self-restraint is rarely a strength of politicians, we want to offer some help. Here are three New Year’s resolutions for politicians.
13Jan2011 | Steven Horwitz | 8 comments | ContinuedInflation Doesn’t Pay Anymore
Jeffrey Rogers Hummel and I have an opinion piece today at Forbes.com titled “Inflation Doesn’t Pay The Government Like It Used To.” Key quote: [T]he bottom line is that inflation’s effect on the national debt will no more be able to resolve the escalating U.S. budgetary problems than would an excise tax on chewing gum.
2Dec2010 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Dollar Meltdown: Surviving the Impending Currency Crisis with Gold, Oil, and Other Unconventional Investments
Imagine an ice cube on an asphalt roadway in the mid-summer heat, quickly melting away to nothing. That’s a good way of thinking about what government policy has been doing to the value of our money. In The Dollar Meltdown, investment adviser and former radio talk-show host Charles Goyette explains why the dollar is melting [...]
24Nov2010 | George C. Leef | 9 comments | Continued-
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